


A Day in the Framework

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Series: Ficlets [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Universe, Collaboration, F/M, FitzSimmonsing, Fix-It, Kissing, POV Leo Fitz, Shipper Skye | Daisy Johnson, Speculation, Surprise Kissing, The Framework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 12:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10513881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: Leopold Fitz led a very successful life. So he had never been quite sure why it wasn’t also a happy one.Then, one day, a woman came whirling into this successful life and turned it upside down.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Day in the Framework](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/281583) by eclecticmuses. 



> Written as part of a comic collaboration with [eclecticmuses](https://eclecticmuses.tumblr.com) \- I wrote the story, she drew the comic! 
> 
> You can find her absolutely stunning work **[here](http://eclecticmuses.tumblr.com/post/159153302441/just-in-time-for-the-shows-return-from-hiatus)**!

Leopold Fitz led a very successful life. So he had never been quite sure why it wasn’t also a happy one. 

Then, one day, a woman came whirling into this successful life and turned it upside down. Somehow, she knew things about him that no one else knew, and told him things that couldn’t possibly be true, and he found her frightening and interesting and amazing all at once. Her name was Jemma, but she said it was okay for him to call her Simmons, and the sad smile on her face when she said so only made him want to ask more questions. But he didn’t, because another one of Hydra’s dangerous experiments was about to go horribly wrong, and it was up to them together to save a building full of people.  

“It’s not supposed to do that,” she muttered, frantically typing commands into the simulation’s computer terminal. “You built in a fail-safe -”

“How’d you know that?” It was the umpteenth time he’d said those words to her in the past few hours, and each time she blinked as if she was reminding herself of where she was. 

“I just know.” When he continued staring at her, unmoving, she let out a small huff. “I… studied your files in the resistance.”  

Raising an eyebrow, he returned to his own simulation and got back to work. Although he’d been colluding with the anti-Hydra resistance for some time now, he hadn’t ever felt as discombobulated as he had done in the past twenty-four hours.

“I’ve never met a resistance fighter like you before,” he muttered, peering at the specs of the Mouse House design.  

“Well, this is what we look like,” she retorted. He gave her a wry look over the top of his hologram, and her cheeks flushed a fetching shade of pink. “Some of us. Others look – different.” 

With a low chuckle, he turned his gaze back to the designs. At least it hadn’t taken him long to believe that she worked for the resistance – this Simmons, whoever she may be, was clearly a terrible liar. In a way, he was surprised that she’d made it this long as a part of RagTag, code word for the anti-Hydra movement. 

The problem of the day was that deep in Hydra’s development facilities, someone had figured out how to use one of Fitz’s oldest nonlethal designs as the most horrifying bomb he had ever seen inflicted on human and Inhuman alike.

It would take too long for him and Simmons to get to the building themselves, so they were working on simulations remotely, with her partners in the field standing by for instructions. If they succeeded, another one of Hydra’s anti-Inhuman plots would have been foiled and hundreds of lives would be saved. If they failed, every Inhuman in that building – and their few RagTag friends – would be exterminated. 

Fitz hadn’t engineered anything that people’s lives depended on in years, and as he rolled up his carefully ironed sleeves he wondered yet again if he’d be good enough. His father had taken him under his wing, had praised him since he was a boy, and yet there was still a little voice at the back of his head that wondered. Today, though, he was only trying to figure out how to fix the damage inflicted on one of his devices by another one of Hydra’s deranged stooges. His father’s company’s policy of cooperation with an administration whose operations depended upon the marginalization and destruction of a vulnerable populace had never sat right with him, and Hydra’s recent ramping up in outright exterminations made him bitterly regret the years he’d gone along with them in silence. 

Across from him, Simmons let out a frustrated swear, stretching onto her tiptoes to begin searching the drawers that lined the wall alongside the desk. Although his home office was state of the art, furnished with all the best equipment money could buy, it was very small. Such had been the necessity of constructing a secret lab about which Hydra could not know. According to the blueprints of his building, the room did not exist, and he’d had to grease many a palm to make it possible. Even though he barely spent any time here at all, he considered the expense worth it. Particularly now that he was sharing it – temporarily – with this strange, captivating woman, muttering as she worked alongside him. 

“If the Mouse Hole,” she started, but he cut her off.

“Mouse House,” he corrected, and she froze, hand briefly lowering in front of a drawer pull before she glanced back at him with a thin smile.

“Right, sorry. Mouse House.”

As she pulled out the pencil for which she’d evidently been searching, Fitz frowned, tapping his fingers as he waited for his eighteenth simulation to finish running. “Y’know, Mouse Hole’s a bit better, actually.”

Simmons let out a small huff of laughter, not raising her gaze from the paper on which she was scribbling calculations. “I know.” 

“If I repackage it,” he continued teasingly, trying to lighten the mood, “should I give you credit for that?”

Instead of his joke landing, however, Simmons just clenched her jaw, clearly trying to maintain a smile but without much success. A few locks of brown hair fell from behind her ear to swing in front of her face. “No. That one’s yours. One of the few things I never worked on, actually.”

Over the past few hours, she’d made dozens of statements just like that, implying that she could have worked on his Twilight Pistols, or his drones, or any of his inventions, when they had never met before twenty-four hours ago. Brows furrowing, Fitz opened his mouth to respond as much, but was interrupted by the alert of the concluded simulation. 

“Oh God,” he breathed, spurring her to dart over to his shoulder to see the results. When he turned to look to her for confirmation, he didn’t need to ask – the pale pallor of her skin and the shine of horror in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.

“We can do this,” she said, almost to herself, as she sped over to a different set of drawers. “We just need... to....” Simmons trailed off, peering at the drawer she’d just opened, and he made a quick, impatient gesture.

“No,” Fitz snapped, “that’s wrong, b is for –” 

“Blue is for biological, I know,” she retorted, reaching in for something else.

“How did you –?”

“It’s just common sense, Fitz.” Simmons breezed by him with the practiced air of someone who knew far more than he, and he found himself scrambling to keep up. And Leopold Fitz, heir to the Fitz fortune and a genius to boot, had never needed to struggle to keep up with anyone before in his life. 

For the next thirty minutes, Fitz and Simmons worked with and around each other as fast as they could, and it felt as natural as breathing. He didn’t even realize that they’d been completing each others’ sentences half the time until they were dialing the RagTag team in the field. As Simmons quickly read out instructions to a resistance fighter named Trip, Fitz leaned over her shoulder, re-doing their calculations in his head and hoping against all hope that they were right.

The seconds ticked by as RagTag implemented their instructions, a low hum of phone static coming in over the speaker. Simmons reached over and gave his hand a tentative squeeze, and his thoughts halted, stuttering as if he was trying to remember something. As if the feeling of her hand over his was a familiar one; as if the comfort he felt at her touch were real. 

“All clear,” crackled the voice on the other end of the line. “Bomb’s been disabled.”

Fitz nearly collapsed with relief, pounding one fist gently on the table in celebration, and Simmons let out a low gasp of relief. In his peripheral vision, he could see her moving, and before he knew what was happening, she was turning him towards her, grabbing onto the lapels of his waistcoat, and bringing their lips together. 

His body froze, eyes staying open as he stared at Simmons’ face so close to his. Teardrops of relief clung to her lashes. Again was that feeling at the back of his mind, as if this was something he should know or understand or had done before. Without making the decision to do so, Fitz found himself closing his eyes, wrapping his arms around her slim waist, and kissing her back. She was so slight against his chest but so solid, so real, so warm as she caressed his lips with hers. 

The image of an enormous basement laboratory flashed into his head, the sight of tears on Jemma’s lashes starkly lit by fluorescent lights all too familiar, and then flashed right back out again.

Simmons pulled back just enough to brush her nose against his, looking up at him as if she were searching for something. For his part, Fitz had lost all desire to think anything through, and simply dove in to kiss her again, tilting her head back with one hand and pressing her against the lab table. She let out a whimpered gasp, fingers clinging to the fabric of his waistcoat, and met his every move or slide of tongue with one at least doubled in passion.

Again, a memory that didn’t belong to him flashed into his head, of her whimpering in pleasure beneath him, first in a hotel bed and then in a brick-lined bunk. Images began to spin through his head, of a nubile young prodigy strutting through a hallway, of a cat liver left lying precariously close to a sandwich, of a scientist whirling through a lab on a plane, of a woman almost begging him to stay, of the most beautiful ash-covered face he’d ever seen, of the bay windows that would overlook their breakfast nook, of his favorite person in the world reminding him that she’d fallen in love with him, of her, of her, of _her_. 

It was like remembering a dream that had faded upon waking, the knowing beginning in fits and starts and then crashing over him like the waves of the ocean that had once almost drowned him. She was Jemma Simmons, his best friend, the one person he wasn’t strong enough to live without and yet for some reason had been made to believe he could. She was his partner, the love of his life, the voice in the back of his head telling him that he was more than smart enough, good enough, brilliant enough all on his own. She was his person, his reason, his home.

With a cross between a sob and a gasp, he staggered away from her, left hand coming up to press against his forehead, trembling. The tremors came rushing back to him, too – the hand whose nerves had almost been destroyed when he’d sacrificed his own life to save hers. The brain injury that was his, his onetime tragedy and yet an indelible part of him, something that had taken so long to accept and then finally embraced as being one other step along his journey to becoming himself.

He felt her hands wrap around his right hand where he was gripping the edge of the table, and he raised his gaze to meet hers. Jemma was staring up at him, lip wobbling and the light of hope and fear hovering around the edges of her eyes, mingling with nearly shed tears.

“Fitz?” she whispered, and he was distracted by the feeling of her fingers on his wrist, the chill of her skin against his frantically beating pulse.  

When he was finally able to speak, he had to swallow thickly first, starting and stopping twice before he managed to get the words out. “Your hands,” he choked out, “are freezing.” Her brows drew in ever so slightly, and he inhaled before he continued. “Right little ice buckets, they are.” 

Jemma’s whole face lit up, her smile the sun breaking through a clouded day, and its sudden familiarity made him feel light as he never before had in this reality. “ _Fitz_ ,” she said again, voice breaking partway through, “you remember?” 

“The whole damn time,” he breathed, and with a loud sob she threw her arms around his neck, nearly suffocating him with her grip. 

But even that was the most energizing thing he’d ever felt, the dullness of a reality without Jemma becoming acutely clear to him. As Fitz hugged her back, burying his face in her hair, he vowed that he would find his way out of the Framework to make it home to her in their reality, no matter how long it took or how hard he had to work. Now that he remembered, he had something worth fighting for: The life they deserved to live together. 

~~~

“So,” Fitz said, finishing his story with a small shrug, “that’s how I remembered.”

Next to him at the long mess hall table, Jemma shifted so that she covered his left hand with hers, and he turned to smile at her. Usually, they preferred not to be especially tactile with one another while in front of their colleagues, but after spending at least a week apart and in a hellish alternate reality cooked up by a deranged android and their former friend, he figured they could be more lenient about that particular unspoken rule.

At the end of the table, Daisy was leaning forward with her mouth open in either awe or something bordering on adoration. It was an expression that he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her wear before, and he found it a bit disconcerting. Jemma slipped her fingers in between his, holding him more tightly, and warmth spread further through him.

“Oh my God,” Daisy said, bouncing slightly in her chair. “That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard. True love’s kiss broke the curse!” 

At that, Fitz frowned, turning to squint at his friend. Somewhere behind them, he thought he heard the sound of May chuckling as she passed by to get something from the fridge. 

“That’s not actually what –”

“Shh,” Jemma scolded from his left, interrupting him, and then pressed an affectionate kiss to his cheek. “Don’t spoil her moment.” 

His frown switched immediately to bemusement, and he turned to look at her. “ _Daisy_ ’s moment?” 

Grinning and shooting a sly look over at their friend, Jemma scooted her chair a little closer to his. “She worked pretty hard to get you out, too. _And_ she bought us that apartment.” 

Fitz’s nose wrinkled further. As he was about to make another protest, Jemma squeezed his hand again, and the cool metal of her new engagement ring against his skin distracted him enough to glance down at where their hands were wound together on the table. 

He’d finally had the courage to ask her the question very late last night – or, truly, early this morning – after they’d finished the world’s shortest debrief and locked themselves in their room. After hours of crying and kissing and holding each other as close as could be, she sniffled out what the LMD of himself had said and he’d asked her right there, just blurted it out without any of the fancy declarations he’d been practicing for months. As she’d told him once, covered in soot at the end of his bed, they couldn’t waste any more time.

Now that Jemma had saved him from living in a digital hellscape, Fitz planned on getting better at taking advantage of every minute they could spend together.


End file.
